In a July 20 Washington Timescolumn, R. Emmett Tyrrell defended GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann's religious views, after she recently left a church which has reportedly been associated with anti-Catholic viewpoints. Tyrrell further attacked the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, claiming he "regularly spouted racist bilge and assessments of this country that were frankly anti-American." Tyrrell went on to suggest that Obama holds "[s]ome of those views." From the Washington Times:

This sniping at Mrs. Bachmann for the religious values for her former church is a bit hypocritical. In 2008, we elected as president a man who attended the church of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright for 20 years. He remained a member until May 2008, when he resigned under fire. The Rev. Wright regularly spouted racist bilge and assessments of this country that were frankly anti-American. Some of those views were very close to those expressed here and abroad by President Obama. I do not know what Mr. Obama thinks about papal infallibility, but I have my suspicions. My guess is that he doesn't believe in papal infallibility. He will stick with Jeremiah Wright's infallibility.

In a February 8 Washington Timescolumn, American Spectator editor-in-chief R. Emmett Tyrrell wrote: "I suggest that the networks - at least for really big games like the Super Bowl - hire George F. Will and a polite lady commentator with little to say." He then added: "I have in mind Kathleen Parker, the soi-disant conservative columnist and TV personality. She is not a conservative, so there would be no reason for claiming the couple lacked balance, and she does not have much to say on politics, so why would she be long-winded on football? She would be polite and relatively inaudible - perfect."

From Tyrrell's column:

If I had watched only the game, I would have been happy, but even happier if I had lowered the volume of the inane commentary. Possibly, the networks have an agreement to hire garrulous, loud, excessively male commentators who have little to say but say it repetitiously. Unfortunately, it hardly adds to the excitement of the game. Rather, it adds to the confusion of the programing, and there was a great deal of confusion Sunday night. For whole stretches, I sat there stupefied by the confusion, most of it provided by the ads and the garrulous commentators. Not much can be done about the ads, which seem to get more stupid and more incoherent every year, but something can be done about these excessively virile loudmouths.

I suggest that the networks - at least for really big games like the Super Bowl - hire George F. Will and a polite lady commentator with little to say. I have in mind Kathleen Parker, the soi-disant conservative columnist and TV personality. She is not a conservative, so there would be no reason for claiming the couple lacked balance, and she does not have much to say on politics, so why would she be long-winded on football? She would be polite and relatively inaudible - perfect.

Mr. Will would arrive at the microphone with all the facts and figures already in his head. (If he follows football like he follows baseball, he already does have the facts and figures in his head.) He would speak in perfect sentences, employing model grammar, and he would have the good taste to let the game - for the most part - speak for itself. When Mr. Will filed a witticism or some other off-the-wall comment, Ms. Parker could give a little exasperated, "Oh, Geeeoorge" and subside.

In a November 18 Washington Timesop-ed, American Spectator editor-in-chief R. Emmett Tyrrell wrote: "How many more Americans would welcome a soothing pat-down amid the hurly-burly of travel at our nation's stress-filled airports I do not know, but count me in -- especially if the pater-downer is a cute little number on the order of, say, Sarah Palin."

From Tyrrell's op-ed:

The other day, a CBS News Poll found that fully 81 percent of Americans approve the use of the high-tech machines at airports, but that means nothing to Drudge. How many more Americans would welcome a soothing pat-down amid the hurly-burly of travel at our nation's stress-filled airports I do not know, but count me in - especially if the pater-downer is a cute little number on the order of, say, Sarah Palin.

The declining state of the American newspaper apparently warms a lot of hearts. Polls tell us about the general public's disrelish for Congress. Equally disrelished are journalists and newspapers. Frankly I sympathize. The American journalist is an odd creature. Most are as arrogant and provincial as the average American college professor. Curiously, many journalists even look like university professors, especially journalists from the major liberal newspapers.

There was a day when the average newspaper reporter was a bit of a roughneck and looked the part. Now many are frankly nerdy, though it is not their nerdy looks that inflame the general public. It is the arrogance and insularity. Well, as I say I am in sympathy with the general public, but that does not mean I rejoice in the present sickliness of newspapers. Newspapers are essential to the public discourse of any nation and to the public record.

I most recently expressed these wayward views in a discussion of the notoriously Liberal New York Times. I was being interviewed by that very fine conservative journalist Terry Jeffrey, former editor of Human Events and now editor and chief of CNS News at that bastion of conservative media bashing, the Media Research Center (MRC). Terry was delighting in regaling me with a burlesque he had observed at New York's Penn Station. The Times was conducting a subscription drive, with an employee handing commuters gifts emblazoned with the Times logo for subscribing. Prospective subscribers treated the poor sap as though he were carrying the plague. They ducked around him, hastening down the hallway, grateful to be free of the New York Times bacterium.

Well, it is an amusing story, but there on the hallowed conservative ground of the MRC headquarters I had to express my sympathy for the glum journalists at the Times. I want the newspaper to survive. Even in its ideologically perfervid condition it is better than no newspaper at all. We conservatives have our own newspapers, led nationally by the Wall Street Journal. Actually, against mainstream Liberal media we have our own conservative counterculture led by the Journal,Fox News, talk radio, our think tanks and magazines. We can hold our own against the Kultursmog the mainstream media culture besmogged as it is by Liberal prejudice and bugaboos.

Yet liberal justices on the Supreme Court found a "right" in the Constitution that never is mentioned in that document - the right to privacy. Thus was abortion brought down on the nation, not through the will of the majority but through the willfulness of a minority, the liberals.

The entire controversy brings to mind a thesis of mine about liberals and conservatives that I elaborate on enthusiastically in my new book, "After The Hangover: The Conservatives' Road to Recovery," which comes out this coming week. The liberal has the political libido of a nymphomaniac, at times of a sex offender. It is impossible to restrain. By comparison, the conservatives' political libido is more subject to reason and restraint. Almost nothing restrains the liberals' political activism. Conservatives' are more disciplined. Process matters to them.

In a Washington Times column, R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. wrote that Sen. Hillary Clinton's "experience ... includes lying under oath, and obstructing justice." But Clinton has never been charged with, let alone found guilty of, "lying under oath" or "obstructing justice."

On Fox News' Fox & Friends, while discussing retired Brig. Gen. Keith Kerr's question during the November 28 CNN/YouTube Republican debate, Dick Morris said, "You know, listen, let's put the blame where it's due. This is a dirty trick by the Hillary Clinton campaign." On Fox & Friends First, R. Emmett Tyrrell replied, "I think so," when Steve Doocy asked, "So, are you saying that the Clintons had something to do with CNN doing a bad job vetting these questioners?" Tyrrell later stated that "the Clintons ... have played fast and loose with ethics since day one. This is a pattern."